


Starlight Gifts

by Zebrablanket



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Presents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 07:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zebrablanket/pseuds/Zebrablanket
Summary: Akku goes to buy his friends gifts for the Starlight Celebration.





	Starlight Gifts

Akku rarely ever went out alone. It was simply too uncomfortable to be by himself most of the time. Yet he really wanted to buy his friends gifts, and he couldn’t do that with them there. It’d taken a solid week of convincing himself, but he finally walked into a marketplace. The markets were busy this time of year. People moved quickly through the chilly streets. Akku hadn’t seen anything like this since he was a child. His brother had stopped caring about the Starlight celebration as they’d grown older, and each year something else was forgotten. Akku hadn’t celebrated the holiday at all for the past five years. He hadn’t told anyone this of course, with how excited they were it felt like it’d be embarrassing. He simply pretended he fully understood what was going on, desperately trying to fish the meaning of everything from clouded memories.  
It was harder than he expected to find gifts for everyone. He could easily give them weapons, but they had tons of those. It was hard to think of nice gifts while also being jostled around by the crowds, especially for Akku. He jumped a little each time a person brushed against him, the only time he was ever somewhere this congested was on a battlefield. In a way it was a battlefield, people shoved past each other to grab things before someone else could. Akku even saw two women end up fighting over a sweater. Somehow he managed to find gifts for everyone. It took him hours out in the cold, carefully selecting things. Some people were easier than others. Some people were easy. He bought Ronja a new cooking set. Others were harder. Zelda’s was the last gift he found. She had so many skills and he wasn’t entirely sure what she might want something new for. He ended up buying her a red mug, a black cat painted on the outside. It was small, but he figured she’d be getting plenty of swords and knives. He wanted to give her something unique. Somehow he managed to head home with gifts for everyone that day.  
Akku was more shaky than he’d realized after being out on his own in that crowd for so long. To some degree he was proud of himself for going, but the effort had exhausted him. So he wrapped all his gifts and put them under the tree they’d put up before heading to take a nap before dinner.  
It didn’t take the others long to notice his gifts under the tree.  
“Did some take you shopping?” Zelda asked him at dinner that night.  
“I went by myself, you would’ve seen the gifts otherwise” Akku replied.  
He got more of a reaction to that than he expected. It seemed his friends were more aware than he realized of his discomfort with being alone. Lots of people told him he’d done a good job, despite not even knowing what he’d bought them.  
“I would’ve taken you, it’s your first time celebrating” Zelda told him. She’d noted when the decorations started going up how oblivious he’d been to what they were doing.  
“W-was it that obvious?” Akku asked. He was embarrassed, but to his surprise nobody laughed at him.  
“Well you were pretty confused. You stared at the tree for like five minutes” Izabella commented.  
“The lights were pretty…” Akku mumbled.  
“And your brother was enough of a jerk to make me nearly burn down Gridania. Doesn’t seem like a Starlight kind of guy,” Jacky piped in.  
“Jacky, you’d burn down Gridania anytime if you had an excuse” Alessa called out.  
“True, but the point still stands” Jacky replied.  
Alessa shook her head, but didn’t argue further.  
“Trust us, you’ll have a great time this year” Zelda told Akku, pulling him back from the side conversation.  
Akku didn’t know how to reply, so he just smiled.


End file.
